I think it would be a lie if I said I was tempted on more than one occasion in the recent weeks to update this blog. It is not like I have lost the urge to communicate; it is more like I have not much to communicate that is new or interesting enough. Life has pretty much settled down into a downright predictable rhythm, even accomplishments and disappointments are factored in according to preset levels. It is not exactly sterile like a sickly green hospital gown, but it not a chaotic celebration of desired excitement either. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle.
You walk straight ahead and the road goes around in circles. Actually, there has never been a definite goal in your life. All your goals keep changing as time passes and as locations change, and in the end the goals no longer exist. When you think about it, life in fact doesn’t have what may be called ultimate goals. It’s just like this hornet’s nest. It’s a pity to abandon it, yet if one tries to remove it one will encounter a stinging attack. Best to leave it just hanging there so that it can be admired. At this point in your thinking, your feet become lighter, it is fine wherever your feet take you, as long as there are sights to see. Gao Xingjian in Soul Mountain
Sometime towards the end of last month six of us headed out towards the deserts. It was meant to be my break in Goa in November, but circumstances and planning over much alcohol deemed that it be done in October, right after the folks and relatives had left after their latest visit. The picture you see posted alongside is from the same trip, shot with a camera phone atop a very young and feisty camel. It was good fun. Fun enough to have almost compelled me to do a volt face in my car while driving back to work on the Monday morning when we returned and head out on a full tank wherever the road would take me to. Only if life was that easy and simple. Maybe it is, maybe it is not. The only thing that counts is that I did not turn around and dutifully went back to my regular life.
Truth be said, I am completing this entry a handful of hours after I’d started writing it. In those few hours the hues that colour my perspective have changed yet again and I come face-to-face with my favourite rhetorical question: It does not have to be this difficult. Will it always be like this? Will it always be this hard? As much as the realization alarms me, I know that it is very much possible. Is this what I wanted life to be? Having sworn to stay away from feeling grateful for the pieces of pity thrown my way, why do I find myself back here, in the same familiar wretched situation? I can’t imagine that I ask for it each and every time. Something has to go right somewhere, does it not?
At the same time I guess I know most of this is vain posturing. The world is nice. The world is good. Everything happens for a good reason. Everyone loves you, you love everyone and the world is a place that loves each other. I have ratified the findings as much, I know. Then again, if your core being argues against it when it matters the most, do you think it is fake, it is selfish and easily discountable? I don’t know, I think I am rambling on. And I seriously think you have better things to do in life than to read this crap. Really.